Jack Cartwright, Innovent Recycling, explores the substantial material value hidden in the UK’s discarded electronics and the carbon savings that proper recovery can deliver.
The UK has a complicated relationship with electronic waste. According to the Global E-Waste Monitor 2024, analysis of its country data shows we generate around 24kg of e-waste per person annually – the second-highest figure in the world, behind only Norway.
Research from Lancaster University and Material Focus estimates that UK households and businesses collectively produce about 1.45 million tonnes of electrical waste each year.
Yet buried within those discarded laptops, servers, and smartphones lies something remarkable: materials more concentrated and valuable than anything we could extract from the ground.
A different kind of mining
Consider the economics of material recovery. The concentration of precious metals in printed circuit boards (PCBs) varies considerably depending on the device, but studies consistently show that they far exceed the concentration in natural ore.
Research published in Waste Management found gold content ranging from around 180 to 3,700 mg per kilogram of PCB waste.
At an industrial scale, one tonne of circuit boards produces about 165 grams of gold on average, according to reporting on The Royal Mint’s operations in The Manufacturer. That’s roughly 30 times richer than typical gold ore – and that’s before you account for the copper, silver and palladium also present.
This isn’t theoretical potential. The Royal Mint opened a precious metals recovery facility in South Wales in 2024, capable of processing up to 4,000 tonnes of circuit boards annually.
Media coverage of the facility indicates that this volume of material contains roughly 0.5 tonnes of gold, 1,000 tonnes of copper, 2.5 tonnes of silver, and 50-60kg of palladium. The recovered gold is refined to 999.9 purity and is already being used in the Mint’s 886 luxury jewellery collection.
What makes this significant isn’t just the value recovered, but what it replaces. Historically, much of the UK’s end-of-life circuit board material has been exported to overseas smelters for high-temperature processing.
The Royal Mint’s approach, using room-temperature chemistry developed by Canadian firm Excir, extracts precious metals in minutes rather than hours and with considerably lower energy requirements.
The carbon calculation
The environmental case for proper e-waste processing extends far beyond preventing hazardous materials from entering landfills. The carbon savings from material recovery are substantial and well-documented.
Using copper scrap instead of virgin ore typically saves around 85% of the energy and cuts associated CO2 emissions by about 65%, according to the European Copper Institute and related industry data. For aluminium, recycled production can save about 95% of the energy and reduce emissions by around 90% or more compared with primary production.
Across common metals used in electronics, recycling consistently delivers very large energy and carbon savings versus mining and refining virgin material.
Applied at scale, these savings become significant. Research conducted by Anthesis and Lancaster University for Material Focus found that if the UK’s discarded small electrical products were properly recycled rather than thrown away or hoarded, we could avoid an estimated 2.8 million tonnes of CO2 emissions every year.
That’s roughly equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the road. The saving comes not from the recycling process itself, but from avoiding the energy-intensive extraction and processing of new raw materials.
These benefits can be amplified further when recycling operations themselves are powered by renewable energy.
ITAD facilities running on solar or other clean energy sources reduce the carbon footprint of the recycling process to near zero, meaning almost all the environmental benefit flows through to the avoided emissions from virgin material extraction.
It’s a compounding effect that makes the case for proper e-waste processing even stronger.
What we’re currently losing
Despite the value sitting in our discarded electronics, the UK’s collection infrastructure captures only a fraction of what’s available.
Defra data show that in 2023 the UK collected 473,019 tonnes of household WEEE against a target of 471,942 tonnes – the first time overall collection targets had been met since 2016.
That 473,019-tonne figure represents roughly one-third of the 1.45 million tonnes of electrical waste estimated to arise annually.
The remaining material follows less desirable paths. The Material Focus Electrical Waste challenges and opportunities research identified at least 500,000 tonnes of electricals being lost each year through being thrown away, hoarded, stolen or illegally exported, including around 155,000 tonnes of household electricals thrown in general waste and ending up incinerated or landfilled.
E-waste that reaches landfill does not simply sit there benignly. Electronic equipment can contain hazardous substances, including lead, mercury, cadmium and brominated flame retardants, which can leach into soil and groundwater over time if not properly managed.
Meanwhile, the embedded metals and plastics – which required significant energy and emissions to produce – are effectively written off.
Beyond precious metals: Critical materials
The conversation about e-waste value often focuses on gold and copper, but critical materials are an increasingly important part of the story. Hard disk drives contain neodymium-iron-boron magnets.
Electric vehicle motors use neodymium, praseodymium and dysprosium. These rare earth elements are essential for technologies ranging from smartphones to wind turbines.
According to the Global E-Waste Monitor 2024, only about 1% of global rare earth element demand is currently met through e-waste recycling. Most supply still comes from primary mining, which is heavily concentrated in a small number of countries.
Improving recovery of these materials from end-of-life products is therefore not only an environmental opportunity, but a strategic one for supply chain resilience.
While industrial-scale rare earth recovery from e-waste is still an emerging field, UK research and industry are moving fast. Universities and companies are advancing hydrometallurgical processes, magnet-to-magnet recycling and other ‘urban mining’ approaches.
As demand for critical materials grows with the energy transition, secondary recovery from e-waste is likely to become a core part of the supply picture, not a niche.
The business perspective
For organisations managing regular IT refresh cycles, the hidden value in e-waste translates directly to the bottom line. Proper IT asset disposition (ITAD) doesn’t just manage compliance risk; it can generate meaningful financial returns through asset value recovery.
A well-structured ITAD programme captures value at multiple stages: refurbishment and resale of functional equipment into secondary markets, component harvesting from non-functional units, and materials recovery from genuinely end-of-life assets.
Crucially, the data destruction needed for regulatory compliance happens regardless. When organisations work with certified ITAD providers, they often find that disposal costs can be significantly reduced – and in some cases offset entirely – by the value of recovered assets and materials.
The key is working with processors who can demonstrate transparent, auditable chains of custody. For UK IT equipment, that typically includes ISO 27001 certification, providing assurance around information security management across the process, and Environment Agency licences for waste carrier, broker and treatment activities, confirming legal compliance for WEEE handling and transport.
These credentials matter not only for compliance, but for ensuring that equipment and materials actually reach proper reuse and recovery channels – rather than being exported into informal processing or disappearing into residual waste streams.
A circular opportunity
The UK’s position as one of the world’s highest e-waste generators per capita is often framed purely as a problem. It is a problem – but it is also a resource opportunity. Every discarded laptop, every obsolete server, every broken smartphone contains materials that are genuinely valuable, both economically and environmentally.
The infrastructure to capture this value is continuing to develop. The Royal Mint facility in South Wales is one high-profile example of domestic recovery capacity. At the same time, ITAD providers, producer compliance schemes and authorised treatment facilities across the UK are investing in improved collection and processing.
Defra figures indicate that 2024 household WEEE collections increased further to around 496,000 tonnes, building on the progress made in 2023.
What’s needed now is broader recognition that e-waste isn’t simply a waste stream to be managed at least cost – it’s a resource stream to be captured and optimised. For businesses, that means treating IT asset disposal as part of a circular technology strategy, not just a line item under ‘waste’.
For the resources and waste sector, it means continuing to strengthen the collection networks, treatment capacity and market mechanisms that keep these materials in productive use.
The value hidden in e-waste is significant. The carbon savings from recovering it are measurable. The alternative – continuing to mine virgin materials while sending recoverable resources to landfill or low-grade recovery – makes neither environmental nor economic sense.
About the author: Jack Cartwright is Sales Director at Innovent Recycling, an ISO 27001-certified IT asset disposal and WEEE recycling company based in Cheshire. Innovent helps businesses across the UK manage end-of-life IT equipment with full data security compliance and environmental responsibility.
